Imperfections
by TrueTigress
Summary: AU/AH, Bella from a young age has watched her parents violent relationship unfold, until they split up and that violence and abuse is pushed onto her. Now she must fight for her sanity and stay strong for the one person she truly loves in the world, her little sister Nessie. Entry for Sibuna926Twihard's Anti-bullying/Anti-suicide/Bad home life contest


**_This is an entry for Sibuna826Twihard's competition, please, don't judge me too harshly because yes, this is basically my life story, but this isn't even a tenth of how complicated my life was, so don't be hating._**

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Imperfections

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My name is Isabella Marie Swan.

I'm a relatively dull person, I have dull brown eyes. Dull brown hair. Dull pale skin. My personality is dull. My life is not dull.

The earliest memory I have is of my mother and father arguing. I was maybe two or three years old and I can remember sitting there cowering in the corner with Roxy my pet dog.

Charlie and Renee were both violent to each other, I guess you could say they were like a hurricane and a volcano, one of the most lethal combinations you could think of.

The memory I have is that they were yelling, Renee's phone was thrown at the wall and then Charlie launched a cup of coffee at the wall, the shards of the porcelain cup shattering all over the blue kitchen walls and some of the coffee splashed on my skin, but I ignored the pain intent on trying to hide from the noise of my parents arguing. Charlie grabbed my mothers hair and threw her head against the wall while she cried out and screamed, punching and kicking him to try and get him off her.

He was clearly drunk again.

The next thing I remember was my mother crying in bed, I went up to see her to make sure she was okay, to make sure she wasn't hurt. She smelt of tears. She always had smelt of tears. The soft salty smell mixed with a stinking musky smell from not been able to get a bath.

If she got a bath my father was so paranoid from the drinking that he would beat her, if she got a bath or tried to dress up he accused her of cheating on him, though it was him who really cheated on her.

Both of them would get high on drugs, I remember the random people who came around to the house to buy their 'green backy.' They house always smelt of their green backy. Green back and tears. Always tears.

When my little sister was born, Renesmee everything changed, rather than been terrified of my parents I realised I now needed to protect the tiny girl.

I was only three and a half when she was born, but I can remember going to nursery and crying because she had been born, I didn't want somebody to be brought into the life I had lived. I didn't want anybody to see the things I had seen from such a young age.

The second memory I have so clearly in my mind is another time when my parents were arguing, Nessie was only one year old, she was laid in her buggy in the living room and my parents were fighting upstairs, I don't remember what about, but there was a lot of banging, yelling and throwing things about. I dragged the buggy into the kitchen and stood there rocking the buggy, singing Rock-a-bye-baby… Her little eyes drifted so peacefully and when she was asleep, though I now don't understand how she could sleep with the violent racket going on upstairs, I went back to hide under the kitchen cupboard with my dog again, Roxy was like a sister to me. She was my guardian angel, my protector.

I remember tucking my head into her shoulder and refusing to sob, holding in the emotion.

Another memory, though this time a good one, I was maybe six years old, one of the only honestly good memories I can remember from my past.

"Bella! Bella wake up!" Charlie shook me awake and I groaned a little because I knew it was late and then I gasped.

"Has Santa been yet?!" It was Christmas morning, or I knew the previous day had been Christmas eve.

"No, but look outside." I opened my curtain and stared out of the window, "It's too early for Santa to come yet, but we wanted you to come and make a snowman with us!" Charlie grinned, I cheered a little and then ran down the stairs with my father, Nessie was already down on the sofa with Renee.

"Bella!" Nessie grinned at me, and I smiled at my little sister. I loved her so much, more than my own life.

"Come on then! We need to go outside and play in the snow!" My mom cried with glee as she opened the door and Charlie helped me and Nessie pull on our shoes and our winter coats.

They began to build a snowman and me and Nessie watched with wide eyes as 'Jack Frost' began to take shape.

The rest of my childhood was much of the same stuff, arguing, fighting, drinking, drugs, watching my parents batter the hell out of each other with one or two fuzzy moments in between.

We moved in and out of hostels for the next few years, and then I officially started in primary school. I still remember that school to this day. One girl in particular bullied me, a girl called Jessica Stanley.

I had only one friend I can truthfully name and her name was Angela Webber. She was the only girl I really ever spoke to, the only person I ever really spoke to, to be honest, but Jessica was evil to me.

She made my life a living hell, she would punch me, kick me and spit in my face and call me names, all the while I thought I deserved this because I had seen my parents do this to eachother. In my mind, this is how people treated each other. This was completely normal.

Time passed and one teacher also began to hurt me, she would slam my wrists onto the table when I slouched and one time I was talking to the teaching assistant, a woman who was really nice and we were having class time on the carpet. She yelled my name and stormed to the back of the room, grabbing my arm and she dragged me across the carpet on my bare knees. I had carpet burns for weeks after that.

When the christmas play came up, I remember I wanted to audition to be an angel and this other girl called Paige also wanted to be a Christmas angel, the teacher looked at us both and said, "Bella, you're not pretty enough to be an angel." Those words burned me to my core, after hearing Charlie say those words to my mother, "You're an ugly bitch! Nobody would ever want you." I understood completely.

I didn't deserve to be a christmas angel because I wasn't worthy of the position. I was a sheep instead.

At the same primary school, the same girl who had bullied me all of my life shoved me to the floor in the cloak rooms and stabbed me in the head with a pen knife, I remember that there was so much blood, but a part from that the whole thing was hazy, but I remember the pain of the knife hacking into my skin, it was like a thousand of the punches and a thousand of the kicks I had taken off her all together at once.

After than I started to wish I was dead, even telling my parents it would be better if I just died.

On a night I started to tie pretend noosed on a hook in my bedroom and try and make myself jump of the bed, but I couldn't do it for some reason, so the second best thing I could do was have time off school.

I started to make myself throw up at school every day to be sent home, through home wasn't much better than school at least I could hide under the kitchen sides and cuddle Roxy or play with Nessie because she wasn't at full time school yet.

Nessie was growing to be a rather carefree young child, she didn't see the fights with the same brutality I did, she never experienced them first hand because I always hid her from them, whether it was in the garden or hiding under the covers in her bedroom, I always made sure she was protected before I was, because she was the only thing that mattered.

I moved schools in year four, but I never felt apart of the class. A boy called Danny bullied me in the same way Jessica had, he hit me, punched me, called me stupid and ugly and told me I was a freak and that I should have never come to his school because he was the boss of the school and nobody came there that he didn't know or like. I hated him, but I thought that what he was doing was normal.

What stopped the bullying was when I was kicked by him in class under the table, I burst into tears and the teacher asked me what was wrong, "Danny kicked me! He keeps doing it and I'm sick of it!" I cried to the teacher, but she didn't believe me.

After than I was about to give up, but the next day the teacher came to me and told me that the teaching assistant had seen this happen to me more than once and had seen the bullying taking place. The boy was punished and after that my school life in primary got better.

I made a few friends, only two, but to me that was a lot of friends as I never got close to people. Their names were Nadine and Hayley, Nadine was from a high class family and was a little posh, but she accepted me, and Hayley was from a middle class family and she had horses which was one of my favourite animals, so we bonded over that.

In year six I drifted a part from my friends and everything got lonely again. My mother and fathers arguing got worse and I didn't know how to cope with it other than to lavish my time in art. I drew some horrible things, I drew the beatings, I drew blooded knives and rain storms and dead people with their heads hacked off and the teacher saw me as a disturbed child.

Miss Cavell got closer to me, I had always liked her, but she would keep me back after school to talk to me and she would let me go outside of the classroom to work because she knew I didn't like working with people. She became my confident, my most trusted friend and she was one of the only people I cried in front of.

Eventually the teacher had to leave to get a new job, and in a way I knew she would because everybody in my life had let me down or left, so why not her? She gave me her work address and promised me she would write, but I had the address taken off me by my mother who was jealous of the close relationship I had with the teacher.

I moved to high school and I was still a highly disturbed child, haunted by the memories of my drunken father and my deranged mother fighting, beating each other and in a cold war all of the time. I didn't know how to cope with the emotions running through me, because somehow I felt like all of it was my fault, if I had never been born, they would never have been together. It was my fault all this was happening.

When Nessie was eight she made friends with a boy named Ashley, he was a lot older than her but mentally around the same age, he abused her and touched her.

When she told me I felt sick with rage, I didn't know what to think, what to do, how to act. I felt angry. Truly angry for the first time in my life, because somebody had hurt the one person who really meant something to me.

A few months later, my sister was beaten up by a girl who was my age and the same anger returned again, my little sister, the one person I truly loved in the world had been hurt yet again, but this time I could do something about it.

I ran out of the door and I punched the girl, I don't remember what happened next because the haze came, I was in a haze fuelled by anger, hatred and darkness.

And that's when I really began to hate myself, because I knew I carried the same anger and darkness within me that both of my parents had. I knew I had it, and I knew that if nobody would have pulled me off that girl I would have probably put her in hospital, and I was only twelve years old.

Soon after that happened I was walking to school in the winter time and a car pulled up at the side of me, I didn't know what to think so I carried on moving, trying to ignore the car, but a man got out. I will forever remember his face, his horrid face that burns in my memory.

He ran towards me and swiped at me, I didn't know what to do, so I turned and kicked him, right in his balls. Of course he dropped straight onto the floor and then I ran, my shoe almost fell off and I remember stopping to take one look at the man, he was now stood up and I knew if he wanted he could have easily followed me but by some miracle I made it to the bus stop.

I was in a daze. I stood there frozen not knowing how to feel. I let the anger and despair wash over me, clouding my emotional state so I appeared blank and aloof rather than like a terrified young girl which is what I felt like inside.

I got onto my school bus and one girl asked me if I was okay, and then I burst into tears and told her the whole story.

At school they asked me lots of questions and got police in, and one of the teachers accused me of lying saying no child had the power to bring down a fully grown man. If it wouldn't have happened to me, I wouldn't have believed it, but I still felt the anger stir within me at the teacher who dre doubt me, but I also felt sadness, great sadness that nobody seemed to want to believe me.

Charlie and Renee believed me though, but my biggest support through it all was my grandmother. She was the light at the end of the tunnel, saying she would protect me, and I joked saying she would be like Kung Fu Panda (Because she was a larger lady)… but she'd be my Kung Fu Grandma.

From that day I was close to my grandma, I loved her almost as much as I did my little sister Nessie.

Something happened when I was thirteen that would change my life forever, My mother and father split up, and you wouldn't believe how intensely happy I was. Finally something had gone right in my life. I saw everything get brighter, I dreamed my mother would suddenly get better and my father would stop drinking and that maybe I could now get the parents I heard about in fairy tales.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Renee cycled into a spout of depression.

She began to drink, do drugs and go out on a night or have parties.

I don't know what was worse, my mother coming in at four in the morning retching her guts up after me been up all night worried that she had been stabbed or raped , or the fact that with each passing day my dreams of being Dr. Swan went further and further our of reach, because from a young age I knew what I had wanted to be, I had wanted to be a Time Traveller or a Zoologist, and considering a time traveller was not a real job, I decided that I would get a PhD in Zoology, travel the world and get away from my parents.

Now I wanted that more than ever, but my grades dropped. A once grade A student was beginning to fail classes, miss school, my attendance dropped to 65% and I failed in almost all of my classes.

I had to stay at home and look after my mother and Nessie, they both needed me. Nessie needed me for the emotional support and physical support, simple thing like washing her uniform or taking her to school, cooking her tea or even letting her tell me about how she was doing at school.

When my mother had parties, I would sit outside my sisters bedroom door keeping guard to make sure nobody entered her room. Countless people had entered my room, more than once I had found random guys curled up on my bed with sick hanging out of their mouths and one time a guy had tried to climb in bed with me.

Eventually Renee kicked us both out to live with Charlie, but he was also an alcoholic who didn't give a shit about anybody. I couldn't cope with him, unlike my mother he was violent and abusive.

I moved back with my mother and she began to blame me for Nessie staying at my dads.

She blamed me for how she was.

She blamed me for having to put up with Charlie and his abuse for all of those years.

She wished I was dead.

She wished she had an abortion.

She called me fat, ugly, worthless… and it wasn't stuff I hadn't heard before, but coming from your own mother? The things she said destroyed me. I became broken, fragmented. I became cold, trying to be unfeeling. Without my sister here I lost the will to live, and then another thing happened which tipped me over the edge.

My dog died. Roxy, my protector. The one who had been there all my life, the one who I had cried into, hid with and loved with my entire heart, passed away in my arms.

I started to overdose on tablets, slitting my wrists, attempting to hang myself again… the pain made me feel something. Something other than just self loathing and hated. It made me feel alive while all around me my life was falling apart.

My father then met a nice girl called Sue, she had been in an abusive relationship in the past and I hoped she could change my dad. At first she didn't, he still drank and was abusive to everybody.

One day he was so drunk that he expected me and Nessie to sleep in the same bed with him, and after years of been punched, kicked and beaten off people, and having nobody to hold me when I cried or to be there for me, I was afraid of touch. I hated people touching me. Even a slight brush of somebody against me sent me into 'freeze mode' so sleeping in the same bed as somebody made freak out. I refused and tried to get to my grandmas, but Charlie grabbed my coat and ragged me into him and pushed me into a wall, I heard my jacket tear and I panicked, knowing what he was capable of, I let the adrenaline fuelled anger filled my veins and cloud my judgement and before I knew it I punched him in the face three… maybe four times before darting out of the door and to my grandmothers.

I brayed on the door, begging for her to let me in, but she wasn't home.

It began to rain, almost comically now that I think about it, but at the time it made me feel alive again. It almost washed away the anger and left the sadness and self loathing there. I began to panic at what I had done. I had let the anger win again. That was not acceptable.

I rummaged around the garden of my grandmothers and found a sharp edged pebble, it was almost blunt, but as I pulled up the seam of my skirt to reveal the top of my thigh I felt the pain again as I pushed the stone into my thigh, making the pain last, punishing myself for what I had done. Punishing myself for even been alive.

After that happened Charlie and Sue found out they were having a baby together. At first I didn't want the baby to even have to be born into this cruel world. I hated the thought that something so small and innocent would have to be born into a cruel life like I had, but then my dad began to change.

Charlie cut down on drinking and began to work through his anger issues. All the while Renee got worse. As well as mental and emotional, the abuse got physical.

She would spit on me to show me I was lower than her, she would throw glassed at me, cutting my feet and hands as I tried to stand up from cowering and covering my face.

She would chase me up the stairs threatening to beat me, kicking my door off it's hinges, I even kept a screw driver in my draws to constantly screw my door back on it's hinges, though the door frame was ruined after the ninth time she kicked it off it's hinges.

I began to get even more depressed even joining her with drinking at her parties to stop the pain, more than once the random guys would try cop a feel of my boobs or bum and I became increasingly scared one of them would rape me in my own house.

Luckily nothing like that ever did happen, but I did eventually get kicked out of my own bedroom. It happened one day, I came home and all of my stuff was in the small bedroom.

I had been moved out of my room for plants. Cannabis plants.

Renee was now growing drugs as well as taking them, and if you want to know I wasn't impressed at the fact that I was pushed aside for something as meagre as plants!

I was incredibly hurt that the plants got a better room than me, Renee even named all of the plants and started to call them her babies, which made me really pissed off and angry.

Eventually Sue had the baby, Ruben, and I knew my father had changed for the better, maybe not as much as I would have liked, I mean, I was still terrified of what he was capable of, he was still the volcano in my mind.

I eventually got back in touch with my Aunt Rosalie and her five children, one of whom was my childhood best friend, Natalie. Natalie and me had always been close from the moment she was born.

I began to spend time with them, going every few weekends and every holidays to get a break form Renee and her horrible ways, it was amazing because they were all so happy. Even though my aunt had depression she was nothing like my mother, she was happy still.

I decided I would be like her when I was older, from a young age I had always known I would never have children for fear of them turning out like me, but in a way I knew that I wasn't really fully like either of my parents. I had always been kind and caring towards the people I loved. Sure I had some anger issues, but I could control them a lot easier than my mother or my father could, it was just when I was scared or my sister was hurt that these anger issues over rode my common sense and turned me into a violent maniac.

I began to build up my confidence slightly, listening to my aunt's advice, soaking up her love and acceptance for me, no matter if I was broken or not, she still loved me.

It was all so new.. so different that I began to cry while I was there. Before going there I hadn't cried for around four years.

They began to open up a side of me I never thought I would have, they opened the happy side of me, I realised that I could love and that I could trust people. I just needed the right people to do this with.

Renee got jealous of my Aunt Rose and banned me from seeing her, at around the same time Nessie came back to live with us, apparently she was too 'gobby' for Charlie to cope with. Renee began to abuse her too, hitting her a lot more than she did me, because as I grew older, I began to stand up for myself, this is why she also didn't like me going to my Aunt Roses because they taught me to stand up to her, to not live in fear of her any longer and when she realised I no longer feared her, she began to fear me.

I had no idea why she feared me, because I would have never hurt her. She was my mom, the person who I hated but loved at the same time, but I would have hurt her if she hurt my sister like she did me.

Things progressed and I couldn't protect my sister and myself, I ran away a few times, I couldn't cope with life. I didn't care if I died, I didn't care at all. I just wanted to end it, to be somewhere other than the dark place I was living, been constantly abused.

The thing that changed my whole outlook on my mother and the belief that she would one day change was the day I burnt my legs, he was out again getting pissed up and Nessie was staying at her friends, I wanted some chips at the time as there was nothing else in for me to eat, Renee refused to get vegetarian food in for me as she said I had to eat the same as her, but I didn't want to eat meat anymore, so I lived off chips.

I left the pan on and it set on fire, I quickly got it out of the house but not without spilling it all over my hand and both my legs. I felt the intense pain all at once, the skin melting on my legs as fell to the ground to quench the flames.

I hobbled around in bare feet to my sister's friends house and they managed to get in touch with my grandmother who took me to hospital. I refused to cry that night. I never cried over pain. Pain was the only thing that made me feel.

As we drove back to my house all bandaged up, one person sat outside the house to give me a message from Renee, "She said she doesn't care if she's burnt her legs. She probably did it for attention so she isn't stopping having fun to play nurse to a whiny teenager who's just begging for attention!" The man said to us. I couldn't believe my ears. She didn't care. She never would.

Months later my confidence level was at rock bottom again, I had no where to turn to, until I made a decision that changed the course of my life.

I ran away properly. I refused to go back to my mothers, and then my grandma took me in.

At first my mother argued with my grandmother to get me back, she threatened us, abused us and made our lives a living hell, and every time I saw her, every time I had to go and see her as part of the agreement all of these memories came rushing back with vengeance.

I hated her for what she did to me.

I hated her for what she was still doing to me.

I felt like I was dying inside every time she called me fat, every time she said I was worthless, every time she told me I would be better off dead..

I managed to get through my GCSE's (exams) depressed and suicidal, I managed to scrape 6 A's, 8 B's, 1 C and 1 D. I was disappointed in the grades. I hated myself for not making everybody proud.

Renee made it quite obvious that she wasn't proud of my results, but Charlie did, he was proud. So was my grandmother.

I managed to get into do the courses I wanted, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Geography by the skin of my teeth, or that is what I believed seen as there were plenty of smart, beautiful and amazing people who wanted to do those subjects too.

Eventually it got too much for me though, I couldn't live with the memories, the pain and the anguish any longer so I decided enough was enough.

I stopped seeing Renee.

I didn't speak to her.

I didn't see her.

I couldn't.

I still see her every now and again, in the car when I see Charlie on a weekend after dropping my sister back home, and all she does is play mind games.

It kills me inside that Nessie still lives there, she rings me up to tell me the bitch had been hitting her, yelling at her, drinking or ignoring her for her latest fling, and that is my biggest fear now. That my sister will turn out to be as broken and as messed up as I am.

I don't trust people.

I don't like physical contact.

I start having panic attacks in huge crowds of people.

I freeze at the sound of loud noises.

I gag at the smell of cannabis.

I gag at the smell of tears.

I feel worthless.

I feel like nobody would ever want me.

And yet, I dream so much about the future it is unbelievable. I dream that one day I might be able to do what I want to do. I may be able to be a zoologist and travel the world, and when that time comes and I am old enough to take legal guardianship of my sister, I will. I will fight till my last breath to save my sister from becoming like me, because she deserves so much.

I've been let down, beaten and abused my whole life, and I don't want that life for Nessie.

So I'll keep on dreaming.

I'll keep on fighting.

And… maybe one day… things will get better.


End file.
